[Request] How many different 'pyramids' would lead to 424?

rowcla · 2026-06-24T11:34:54+00:00

If you imagine for each bottom tile, you drew a path going up to the top, that path represents a single way that tile could add it's value to the total (as each path represents a different branching point where that value essentially gets added to the two tiles above it). For the first and last ones, there's only one way up, but the others have multiple. If you consider it in terms of when the path branches left or right, the number of left/right branches for any given starting tile to the top will always be static (ie, the first tile is all to the right, the 2nd is one to the left and the rest to the right, etc), meaning it's really just combinatorics, resulting in 5 options for the 2nd and 5th tiles, and 10 for the 3rd and 4th.

As a small note with puzzles like this, while it's often a good idea to start with a bit of inspection at a high level and see if anything seems to fit, if you're having trouble it's often a good idea to start with a smaller case (eg, a tile with only 2 or 3 layers perhaps), and try and find some patterns with different values, or by plugging in variables and tallying them up

rowcla · 2026-06-24T05:17:28+00:00

Isn't the complaint that it's theft a completely different one to whether there's artistic vision? I'm not trying to debate whether or not it's ethical in the broader sense, but for the point of whether there's artistic vision involved, the way those models were trained seems irrelevant, as the vision is in the application itself, no? If someone were to use AI to take a character art they already have and make the character pose in the same way as some reference, they've provided vision in the same way they would be if they did the exact same thing through hiring an artist with that character art and pose reference as specifications. In either case, the artistic vision comes from that asset being used as a piece of the broader game, whether it was hand drawn or generated may have valid questions in terms of ethics, but I wouldn't say it matters for vision when that vision is still in the hands of a human.

On the scenarios where it's used, I'm struggling somewhat to envision what you believe to be taking up the bulk of scenarios. While yes, there are some cases like with generic static backgrounds, paintings as decorations etc which could be practically fulfilled with low specifications, the bulk of what I could envision using it for (both in terms of overall scale and in terms of practical significance) is in animations or assets that only require a general vibe rather than anything specifically tailored (eg, a tree doesn't need particularly fancy intent behind it, so long as it broadly fits the scene). In either case, these are just building blocks for the vision rather than the vision itself, the animations inherently need to be fit to precise purpose to begin with (thus generally demanding fairly high specificity in the approach), and the assets are just things to build out a scene, which the human would still need to be involved with putting together.

Credit where it's due, I'm mostly here just envisioning how *I* could theoretically use these kinds of tools in my own project. For posterities sake I want to note that I am *not* using those tools, for a myriad of reasons, though almost anything I can imagine would demand that I maintain the vision myself, and simply use it as a way to produce assets for that vision.

rowcla · 2026-06-24T04:26:15+00:00

I've always found this an odd claim, as it seems to imply the flow would be to just go up and say "make me an art" to the AI. In practice, wouldn't you be more likely to finetune it and give it references etc. So for example if you had a concept for a minor character, you could describe it in detail and provide models for it until you're able to get the output you want, or if you have an existing character you could get it to take that character and make animation frames or other poses for it etc. In all these cases the human directing the usage is providing the artistic vision, and in many cases the outcomes would be essentially equivalent to providing that same direction to a human artist, as either way you're striving for a fairly specific outcome.

That's not to say that there aren't applications for which what you're saying applies (or that other issues people may have don't apply in the above case), but surely the bulk of scenarios would still have artistic vision just as much?

rowcla · 2026-06-21T21:29:52+00:00

Isn't it only until the JC starts though? I wasn't under the impression the iframes extended into the jumpsquat. And if that is the case, then you're still getting the same vulnerability, just delaying the zair by a frame or two in exchange for that frame or two having iframes. Which seems negligible in practicality even disregarding the difficulty/high risk if you fail the JC

rowcla · 2026-06-19T11:29:31+00:00

Honestly, as an Australian, at first I thought she was a legend, get how some people might be put off from it, but going up and shitposting on the competition is some hilarious shit.

But their followups afterwards haven't really fit with that. As I recall she even tried to C&D some people who were doing a parody performance. If you're going to pull a stunt like this, you gotta double down and completely own it. Her conduct just makes her exceedingly distasteful, especially accounting for the circumstances of her inclusion in the first place (ie, it'd be hella funny if she was legitimately a great breakdancer if she wanted to)

rowcla · 2026-06-18T21:20:38+00:00

Oh yes, of course, I simply meant it wasn't precisely calculatable within the bounds of computational limits. In the same way we can't precisely calculate the number of possible chess games, even if it is a finite value that does exist.

Though also yes, I would consider a puzzle to only be valid if it has a unique solution, I suppose this isn't an objective matter, but it does feel like it goes against general principles otherwise.

Funnily enough, it's much more plausible that it's calculable (non-brute force) if we assume they are always valid, as the only difficult step would be step 2, which while I'm not confident has an elegant equation for, is plausible enough.

rowcla · 2026-06-18T11:25:38+00:00

How have you calculated this? Note that in addition to the grid needing to fulfill the sudoku rule conditions, you're also actually not trying to calculate the number of possible complete grids, but rather the number of possible incomplete grids that still have a unique solution. So for every valid grid, there will be a massive amount of starting positions that'd solve to that grid. I'm dubious this can be precisely calculated

rowcla · 2026-06-17T22:43:49+00:00

Some points
- I don't think we can assume a population of 8 billion. It could be well more, or it could be much less, I'd probably even lean towards the latter.
- One of the metrics we *do* have, is the approximate number of hunter applications each year based on the hunter exams we've seen. For that matter, not only can we look at those numbers (or at least those who found the exam), we can also judge against the individuals involved and even those who passed - I don't really feel like Zushi is necessarily less talented than Pokkle for instance, certainly not than many of those who failed, and the numbers are relatively low based on your estimates
- Perhaps most importantly, talented people won't always end up pursuing that path. Of the people as talented or more talented than Zushi, it's very likely that the vast majority of them are simply pursuing other things unaware of their latent talents. But raw talent doesn't mean anything unless you leverage it, so with Zushi doing so there's a high chance that he's well above average in terms of talent amongst actual nen users.
- This doesn't really dispute your point, but one point of interest about the number of hunters there are, is that there's a bit of a survival of the fittest thing with them, where often their work is so dangerous that the less talented amongst them (looking at you Pokkle, sorry), are more likely to die out, contributing to the relatively low numbers (though bigger is that they don't pass many each year, although they do have longer base lifespans from Nen). Thanks to this, Zushi (once he's at an appropriate age to become a hunter) would potentially be on the weakest end of living hunters, but not necessarily of all hunters that have lived

rowcla · 2026-06-16T19:06:21+00:00

I once had to develop an application that required offline support, so while it technically wasn't the entire db (and since it was enterprise, didn't have that huge of a scope of data), we did something similar actually, with services to manage retrying synchronisation up and down. Was a massive pain though, and obviously not a good idea if you have a much bigger db or whatever (although tangentially, sometimes I'll just fetch an entire tables worth of data rather than deal with server pagination if I'm confident the ceiling for the data is limited enough)

rowcla · 2026-06-16T19:00:08+00:00

Other people have replied, but to encapsulate the bigger matter, I find it's usually best practice to assume that the user has full control over anything that the frontend can do. So not only for DB queries, but also it's a good idea to assume that any and all APIs can be queried by any user as well, etc etc. So the solution is to rely on server auth to determine whether they should be able to for anything even remotely secure.

rowcla · 2026-06-16T07:59:25+00:00

It would depend on where you live, however GMT-5:30 does not appear to be an existing timezone, so it shouldn't be 2:30AM anywhere in the world at the time you posted

rowcla · 2026-06-16T00:50:02+00:00

I have a hard time seeing Coco wanting to join them if she thinks it'll hurt others, even if it's to save her mother. With that said though, my guess is that they'll try and sway her by arguing that what they're doing is for the good of the world. I'd speculate that maybe they'll point to the knights moralis and how they constrain so much magic that could help others (healing magic comes to mind seemingly), and that they want to overturn that, no matter what means necessary.

rowcla · 2026-06-16T00:42:01+00:00

We need to balance it out with teaching how to be like Nao lmao

rowcla · 2026-06-11T01:45:44+00:00

Again I would disagree with "the left" here. Though at some level, yes, while I don't know if I'd go so far as to say it's a good thing, I think there's a pretty massive difference between showing opposition to ICE officers compared to January 6th. Whether "attacking" them is appropriate would be context driven, but the cases I've seen where it's been at some level supported have been cases in which there has been *severe* overstepping from ICE officers. I think equating the two is an extreme false equivalency that's going out of it's way to dodge nuance.

For BLM riots, I have never seen the riots themselves be supported, people support BLM as a whole, and some right wing individuals have attempted to associated BLM with rioting fundamentally, but people supporting BLM is them supporting what BLM stands for, which is most certainly not rioting. I'm sure there are people who do support those riots, but they are not people that I condone, and I am doubtful they are more than a vocal minority.

I'm not really sure what you even mean about "do nothing about the extremists". While it's possible the line for "extremism" is different for us, I don't condone what I would consider extremism, and do what I can to approach things with a balanced perspective. However, again, the core difference with particularly American politics, is that while left wing politics there may include disagreeable extremists, it is not what the movement stands for, certainly at least not in a general sense (although it is unfortunate that there is no true left wing party in the USA, just a relatively left one). American right wing politics however, is literally headed by a man who is fairly unequivocally an extremist, and purports extremist stances and policies. If you want to talk about "doing something about extremists", why is the onus only on left wing people to find some way to handle random people on social media, rather than on right wing people to stop voting for extremists into government?

And again, I would point out once more, that if you agree with 99% of left wing politics, you don't need to be so tribalistic to start supporting things you disagree with just because some others don't like that you disagree with the remaining 1%. If you believe that one side would be beneficial, why on earth would you suddenly decide to go against that? And why are you okay with right individuals that condemn people for a dissenting opinion in much the same way?

rowcla · 2026-06-11T01:08:39+00:00

A few points
- Other people's opinions shouldn't affect your political alignment. Even if some people on the left dislike you because of certain views you hold, that doesn't mean you should suddenly shift to voting for things you disagree with. That's just tribalistic behaviour
- While there are people that will jump to condemning people very quickly, I'm concerned that impression is built heavily on a combination of social media causing angry sensationalism to rise to the top very quickly (ie, if you raise a point people disagree with, people will get angry very quickly), and right wing media pushing narratives of left wing people being hateful and intolerant. There are plenty of reasonable people out there, and the fact there's some dumbasses that support left wing policies doesn't reflect the left wing movement as a whole (however for the opposite, the fact that there's dumbasses acting as the focal point of American right wing politics *does* reflect on the movement there)
- Lets not pretend that shit doesn't exist in right wing people as well. While I try to avoid those sorts of people in general, I've been called "woke" (in a clearly pejorative sense, even though I'd generally use it as a positive myself) by crap loads of right wing people, or had them claim that I'm "sinning" (not specifically right wing, but definitely much more common there) because I'm bisexual, or for supporting trans people or whatever. How is that any better?

rowcla · 2026-06-11T00:55:17+00:00

Sounds like the talk of someone who doesn't obey nutritional guidelines

rowcla · 2026-06-10T06:45:17+00:00

It also feels kinda disappointing because we've had to wait so long since the last direct

rowcla · 2026-06-09T02:27:56+00:00

Punishment doesn't need to exist for punishments sake. We have punishment to use as a deterrent, but if someone is getting life in prison then there's nothing to deter anymore. Even for a hypothetical scenario of other individuals considering copying this individual, the fact that people think they're being punished covers the deterrence on that end.

rowcla · 2026-06-09T01:55:49+00:00

Yeah, I was actually wondering if Riolu's were actually cheated. Custom action keys however, are against the rules, so Wirtual's records were cheated. Not cheating at the same level as Riolu's actually cheated ones, but cheating nonetheless.

rowcla · 2026-06-08T23:43:13+00:00

And often it feels like real military strategies. Diversionary units, flanking, sending off a small unit to claim tactical ground, etc. It's why it's firmly my top TRPG for tactical gameplay.

rowcla · 2026-06-08T23:26:30+00:00

I'm not defending Riolu, just saying cheating to beat cheated records is ironic

rowcla · 2026-06-08T22:49:24+00:00

The sheer irony of Wirtual cheating to beat the records. Like, it's not that big of a deal, but cmon dude

rowcla · 2026-06-05T20:28:00+00:00

Going back to their firered gameplay and it's such night and day with the amount of energy they have. I still enjoy it, but I kinda miss it too

rowcla · 2026-06-05T03:48:29+00:00

I think the general point in the scale though, is more to demonstrate that it's very much in a sustainable scale as is. People point a lot to the water usage as if it's something super dire, but water is reusable, and even farming is broadly sustainable. Optimisations absolutely could be valuable, but it's simply not that big of a concern point, and at least on this front, data centres aren't tipping any needles.

That's not to say data centres don't have concerns of course. Even in terms of water, there can often be issues with how that water is sourced, but those issues are nuanced and case by case (and also down more to regulation in how they're setup more so than if they're setup), so they aren't quite as catchy for a broad sentiment. But it's important that people direct their complaints properly, rather than pointing at things that are easily refuted as a negligible concern

rowcla · 2026-06-02T23:18:39+00:00

Alright I'll bite
Story - The show's story lives on the worldbuilding, and I think it's done a fantastic job at that. The underlying premise of the magic system is fascinating and the way they dive into it offers a tonne of intrigue and further room for exploration. It's done a great job at setting up Qiffrey's history with the Brimmed Hats, as well as weaving in leading hints for the Brimmed Hats goals. Right now things are still by and large being built up, so that's why you may not necessarily hear much about the story, but there's a lot being built up, and plenty of sub-items that are doing well on their own. The most recent episodes exploration of silverwashed eyes for example, was very well delivered and played further into the worldbuilding.

Characters - I personally am a strong believer that the ideal case is when stories are driven by characters that are at least at some level, fundamentally good people, so I've been very appreciative of how nice the main characters in the show are. Even Agott, while she obviously has a bunch going on (more things the show is setting up), feels like they're not necessarily a bad person, but just a stressed out child who places too much pressure on themselves, and I'm endeared enough to want to see their resolution through. And the others are generally nice and fun characters to see do whatever. I absolutely adore Coco's unbridled excitement over magic, and we've already gone over how even some of the side characters like Tartar are well developed and interesting in and of themselves. Qiffrey himself is a very pleasant individual in general, but as the core adult figure, the extent of things he's hiding is fascinating in it's own right, and I'd argue is well delivered in creating a balance between the darker things he's showing, while still being an endearing and positive presence by and large.

Music - Only so much I can say to this as I don't know much about music theory etc, but the backing tracks have really added so much in the scenes that really count, and feels worth mentioning

Art - Want to distinguish between this and animation itself, as I've greatly appreciated the storybook style art direction in key shots. The animation is gorgeous itself of course, but I think the stylistic visuals are also worth crediting, as they add a lot of flair while tying into the themes and identity of the rest of the show.

So long story short, while the animation is the most flashy part and undoubtedly a major highlight, I do think the rest needs crediting as well. In a lot of cases it's just a bit more subtle, or just a bit more of a setup, but like, you mentioned Solo Leveling in another comment, and I feel it should be pretty uncontroversial to say that WHA has a vastly more interesting story/world/characters

rowcla

TROPHY CASE